by Evan Graver
He shook his head. “It went down with Kilroy’s ship.”
Joulie said, “My men fished Kilroy’s body out of the water.”
Ryan looked away, trying to get the image of Kilroy and his wife face down in the water out of his mind.
The boat continued to rocket across the water, rocking side to side as it encountered small waves.
Turning to Mango, Ryan shouted, “When this is over, let’s go get some Haitian food.”
Mango grinned. “What’s that, like Chinese?”
Ryan tapped Joulie on the shoulder. “What do Haitians call Haitian food?”
Joulie narrowed her brow in suspicion.
Still shouting, Ryan said, “In the States, we say we’re going to get Mexican or Chinese or Italian. What do Haitians say when they go out to eat?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s called Creole cuisine.”
Ryan turned to Mango. “Did you know the national breakfast of Haiti is spaghetti and hot dogs covered in ketchup?”
Mango stuck his tongue out and acted like he was about to vomit.
Joulie punched Mango in the shoulder. “Don’t make fun our espagheti.”
Several minutes later, the driver pulled the throttles back and the big boat slowed. The backend wiggled side to side as the speed came off. Finally, the boat leveled off and settled low in the water as the driver worked the throttles to bring it alongside Peggy Lynn. Dark Water was rafted on the opposite side of the salvage vessel. Greg sat in the cockpit enjoying an adult beverage, he held up the bottle in a toast when their eyes met. Ryan wanted a beer himself. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t even lunch time.
Travis, Stacey, Emery, Jennifer, and Emily were along the rail as the boats bumped fenders. Travis took the lines and tied them off. The driver shut off the twin engines and silence reigned over the water. Travis extended a hand and helped Joulie climb aboard. Her driver came next, followed by Mango and Ryan. The two former DWR employees went below, stowed their firearms, and grabbed beers on the way back topside.
Dennis came to the bridge door and leaned against it with a cup of coffee in his hand. “We’re tied to the wreck. Stacey free dove the anchor rodes for us and the two boats over there.” He pointed at the Yellowfin, and the Viking moored to the wreck’s stern.
Ryan nodded and drained half his beer.
“How’s Rick?” Greg asked.
Ryan hopped over the gunwales, pulled a beer from the cooler, and sat down in the shade of the fly bridge. “He took a pretty good beating, got a couple of broken and bruised ribs, a few loose teeth, and two black eyes. Joulie’s people are guarding him at the hospital.”
Greg shook his head. “It was my job to keep him safe.”
“You suck at your job.”
“Thanks, asshole.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Where’s my gold?” Joulie asked from Peggy Lynn.
Travis said, “If you come over here by the stern, you can see the strong boxes.”
Joulie walked over to where Travis stood. Everyone crowded to the stern rail to look at the wreckage below. The strong boxes rested beside Northwest Passage on the seabed where they’d tumbled as the boat sank.
“What are you going to do about it?” Joulie asked.
“We were waiting for Ryan to get back,” Stacey said. “He’s the boss and the one who gets to set the hook.”
“Well, boss, get to it,” Joulie said.
Ryan sat down again and unlaced his old desert combat boots. He kicked them off and peeled away the socks. His sweaty feet were thankful for the reprieve, and he realized how much he disliked wearing the boots that had seen him through the mountains of Afghanistan. “Drop the hook, Grandpa.”
Emery moved to the crane and started the diesel engine. He lowered the hook and cable into the ocean. Travis gave him directions using hand signals to get the hook close to the strong boxes. Ryan opened his gear locker and removed his Dive Rite Transpac and attached a dive tank, then he screwed his regulators to the tank valve. He donned boots and fins and slipped into the Dive Rite harness. After spraying a mixture of baby shampoo and water in his mask, to keep it from fogging, Ryan rinsed it in fresh water and pulled it over his head. He stepped up on the rail, and with a giant stride, he entered the water.
Ryan thrust his arms out in front of him, blading his hands and porpoising his body with strong fin kicks. The depth was close to one hundred feet. He quickly reached the bottom, grabbed the crane hook, and swam it to the closest strong box. After hooking it into the strap system still in place from when they’d craned it from Peggy Lynn to Northwest Passage, Ryan signaled for the crane to lift the box. Then he floated over to examine the second strong box. Kilroy had opened it to look at the gold. Fortunately, he had shut it before the EFP had detonated. The web of straps was still in place but needed to be adjusted before the crane hook could be set. He tugged them around and looked up at the surface. The crane winch was slow, and the first box was still on its way up.
He glanced at his computer and then turned to the wreck. There was always something to salvage, and Jim Kilroy had lots of toys onboard. Ryan was familiar with the ship’s layout from their time spent sailing from Belize to Nicaragua, where they’d met the Santo Domingo. Now he steered straight for the dive locker, where he loaded his Transpac D-rings with reels, surface markers, and spear guns. He found a bag and began stuffing BCDs and other gear into it. They would come back for the rest.
Outside the wreck, the crane hook had returned. He attached the strong box and the bag of gear to the hook and signaled Emery to begin lifting. Ryan straddled the crane cable and rode the slowly ascending box up through the water column.
Chapter Forty-Four
When Ryan climbed back on the salvage vessel after his three-minute safety stop, everyone had gathered around the strong boxes and each held a bar of gold. Only Captain Dennis remained on the bridge, unaffected by the gold fever. Ryan shed his dive gear and glanced over at Emily, who stood between Joulie and Jennifer. If Emily knew of Joulie’s relationship with him, she didn’t show it, and he knew Joulie wouldn’t volunteer information about their love affair. He didn’t want or need them comparing notes. He crossed to the bridge and stepped inside.
Dennis stood with his ubiquitous cup of coffee, staring out the large window. Ryan noticed that the captain now wore a pistol on his belt.
“Ready to repel boarders?”
“One never knows what gold fever will do,” Dennis replied.
“Very true,” Ryan said. He leaned out the door and called for Joulie to join them on the bridge. She carried a gold bar with her, eyes agleam. She held it out in both hands.
“This is the symbol of my country.” She indicated the intricate symbol pressed into the precious metal.
Ryan had looked at it before but hadn’t given it much thought. Now he studied it in detail. In the center was a palm tree, at its base, two cannons pointing outward, and six flags—three on each side of the palm—stood at forty-five degrees from the tree’s base. The words L’Union Fait La Force had been stamped below the nation’s emblem.
“What does it say?” Dennis asked.
“Union makes strength,” Joulie replied.
Dennis smiled. “Now you can use the gold to help unify your country.”
Joulie agreed, “Yes, it will be my pleasure to use this gold to help my people. This is why the loa brought me back to Haiti. They knew I would be needed to distribute this wealth.”
Dennis scratched his beard. “When Ryan told us he was giving you half of the gold, I didn’t really like the idea. We salvors like to keep what we find. But over the last week you’ve proved to me how genuine you really are. I know you’ll use the money to do good for your country.”
“Thank you, Dennis.” Joulie kissed him on the cheek.
Her lustrous black hair shined in the late afternoon light. Ryan thought again about how beautiful she was.
The smile on her face disappeared and she abruptly tu
rned businesslike. “Now I will take my gold.”
“In the Cigarette?” Dennis asked.
“No, you will bring it to Billy Parker’s dock. I will arrange for a truck to meet you there.”
“Where are you going to store it?” Ryan asked, crossing his arms, and leaning against the console.
Joulie smiled coyly. “I can’t give away all my secrets.”
“Fair enough.” Ryan moved to the door and lit a cigarette. Looking across the water to the Kilroy’s two boats anchored at the far end of the wreck, he said, “I want you to leave one of your crews here to guard those boats.”
“Wi,” Joulie said. “What will you do with them?”
Dennis answered, “We’re going to sell them.”
“For how much?”
Dennis scratched his beard. “Haven’t really thought about it.”
“I will buy them from you. You won’t have to worry about provenance, and I can sell them quickly.”
“Fine with me,” Dennis said. “Fine with you, boss?”
Ryan nodded. “Works for me.”
Joulie moved closer to Ryan and turned to look at the group of people on the stern and in Dark Water’s cockpit. In a near whisper, she asked, “How is your girlfriend?”
Ryan put the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled. Smoke curled around his words. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”
Emily glanced his way, almost as if she knew they were talking about her. He nodded at her, and she turned back to talk to Jennifer.
“She cares about you. I will pray the loa help you find a way to be together.”
“Thanks.” He wasn’t holding out much hope. She’d broken up with him because of the danger he seemed to constantly put her in. Ryan didn’t think she would want to rekindle the relationship after being kidnapped.
Joulie leaned in close and whispered, “What will you do with all of your gold?”
“Divvy it up.”
“What if I gave you cash for it?”
Ryan turned to her, eyebrows raised.
“Do you have someone who will convert it to cash without any questions? This much gold flooding onto the market will drive the price down. I’ll give you spot price from close of business today.”
Ryan leaned into the bridge. “What’s spot price of gold, Captain?”
Dennis stepped over to the computer and tapped a few keys to log onto his brokerage account. He read off the current number.
“Figure out a total of what we have for today’s price,” Ryan said.
Dennis totaled up the weight of twenty-two gold bars and wrote it on a slip of paper. “That’s minus the four bars missing.”
Joulie frowned. “Why are there some missing?”
“We have three on here, and La Sirene kept one as tribute.” Ryan said, referring to the Haitian loa of the sea. He pointed to the wreck below them. “Kilroy had a diver who took a bar, too.”
“You will retrieve it?”
“Yeah, we’ll find it.”
Joulie took the paper from Dennis. “Do you intend to keep any of the bars?”
“Two,” Ryan said. “Unless you want one, Dennis.”
The older man shook his head. “Might make a nice coaster for my coffee mug. Other than that, I’ve got no use for it.”
“Do you have enough cash?” Ryan asked.
Joulie nodded. “It’s not a problem.”
Ryan wondered where she was going to get eleven million dollars when she’d told him she’d already spent most of her money on infrastructure projects.
“I’ll subtract two bars from your total and take three of the bars you have on the ship. It will give you an incentive to find the one Kilroy took.”
“Hey, Travis,” Ryan shouted and when the man looked, Ryan motioned for him to join them. Travis walked over and leaned against the railing, one foot on the steps to the bridge deck. Ryan stepped down closer to him. “Get one of those gold bars you have in your room and bring it up here.”
“What for?” Travis asked with a frown.
“I’m keeping a bar and you’re keeping a bar. Joulie is going to give us cash for the rest.”
Travis looked past Ryan to the Haitian vodou priestess and whistled softly. “She’s got that kind of dough, eh?”
“She says she does.”
“I thought you only had one bar.”
“I do,” Ryan said. “The one she’s letting me keep is down in Kilroy’s safe.”
“That’s harsh.”
“You cool with taking cash?” Ryan asked.
“You betcha.”
“Sure you’re not Canadian, eh?” Ryan teased.
“Without a doubt, eh?” Travis grinned.
Ryan gathered everyone around and asked if they would like to be paid in cash or gold. The preferred method was cash. Joulie took her phone from her pocket and walked to Peggy Lynn’s bow to have a private conversation.
“What about the bounty?” Greg asked when she was gone.
Ryan shrugged. “I assume it’s still in effect. Those guys in the helicopter were Aztlán cartel members.”
Joulie walked back to the group, still clutching her phone. “I have arranged for a truck to meet us at the marina to pick up the gold.”
“Let’s cast off, Captain,” Ryan said.
“Aye aye,” Dennis said with a salute.
Epilogue
Ryan Weller leaned on the white, rust-pitted railing of the salvage vessel Peggy Lynn. Beside him was Captain Dennis Law. Both men held cups of steaming coffee, and Ryan had a cigarette between his lips. They were staring down through the crystal-clear water at Travis Wisnewski as he carried items out of the sunken wreck Northwest Passage. Don Williams sat in the shade by the recompression chamber. Stacey Coleman and Emery Ducane tended Travis’s umbilical, keeping the proper amount of slack as he moved. They didn’t need to worry about gas switches or blending. They were pumping regular compressed air to the diver and he would adhere to the standard U.S. Navy dive tables, which gave him twenty minutes of bottom time if they wanted to avoid using the chamber. They were salvaging anything of value they could sell either in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, or back in the States. At the top of the list was the gold bar.
“What’s your plans now that this is over?” Ryan asked.
“Can’t say that I’ve thought about it much.”
“I talked to Greg when we were in Cap-Haïtien. He wants to hire us as troubleshooters for DWR, and we might do a few things for Homeland if they ask us nicely.”
Dennis nodded and sipped his coffee. “This hasn’t been the easiest cruise.”
“No, sir, it has not. There were a lot of contributing factors to that, and I was one of them.”
“Glad you can admit it.”
Ryan chuckled. “I’m not out of the woods yet. I don’t think Orozco will be too happy about me killing another one of his henchmen. Greg had our Homeland guy run a facial recog scan, and it came back as one of Orozco’s high-level lieutenants.”
“At least you won’t have to worry about Kilroy double crossing you again.”
“Amen,” Ryan said.
“Speaking of cartels,” Dennis said, scratching his beard. “What about the boatload of drugs we found?”
Ryan stared into the water and sipped his coffee. “There’s two schools of thought, one, we turn over the coordinates to the Coast Guard and let them pull them up, and two, we leave them alone. I can use them for leverage with the cartel, if need be.”
“And if someone else finds the boat?”
Ryan shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
They leaned against the rail, each mulling over his own thoughts. Ryan’s turned to Emily. He had asked her to stay with him on the boat, even offered to use Kilroy’s Viking sportfisher as their waterborne hotel, but she’d rebuffed his offer and took a plane back to Florida. He’d watched her climb the stairs and waved as she stepped through the airplane’s door without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
His heart had sagged out of his chest again, and he was struggling to return it to a semblance of normalcy.
Joulie had offered a comforting shoulder, and this time he’d taken it, along with her cash. The money weighed as much as ten bricks of gold and took up more room. Ryan had counted out two-point-five mill for Travis, paid Greg for the equipment, and then divided the rest between himself, the crew, Mango, and Rick.
Captain Dennis walked over to Emery and leaned over the rail beside him, watching the bubbles rise to the surface. They talked, but Ryan couldn’t hear them above the noisy diesel. A few minutes later, Travis’s figure emerged on the LARS basket, water streaming off every inch of his body. He held a gold bar aloft in one hand like Lady Liberty holding her torch.
Emery shut the diesel compressor engine off after Stacey removed Travis’s helmet. Ryan leaned against the rail and lit another cigarette, luxuriating in the quiet that had descended on the water. The boat rocked gently in the waves as it swung on the anchor chain. Sunlight sparkled like diamonds on the water. He let out a long sigh and closed his eyes, turning his face to the sun.
“We’ve talked about it, boss,” Captain Dennis Law said.
Ryan opened his eyes. “And?”
“We’re all in.”
The two men shook hands.
In his best pirate voice, Dennis said, “Now get your scurvy ass in the water and do a day’s work.”
WHY EOD?
I was first introduced to Navy EOD as a twenty-one-year-old boot camp attendee. I found a flyer on our ship’s (that’s what we called barracks) bulletin board bearing their insignia, a World War II bomb, nose down in front of crossed lightning bolts on a shield with laurel wreaths curling up from the bottom on both sides. Known as “The Crab,” the service badge is issued to members of every military branch after they graduate from the Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal at Eglin Air Force Base. The flyer detailed the physical requirements as well as the job description. It fascinated me.
